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Ancient Mediterranean + Europe
Course: Ancient Mediterranean + Europe > Unit 9
Lesson 7: Early empire- Augustus as Pontifex Maximus
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Ara Pacis
- Ara Pacis
- Ara Pacis
- The Mausoleum of Augustus and the Piazza Augusto Imperatore in Rome
- Gemma Augustea
- The art of gem carving
- Pont du Gard
- Obelisks and ancient Rome
- Lateran Obelisk
- Preparations for a Sacrifice
- The Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden Palace
- The rediscovery and impact of the Domus Aurea
- Portrait of Vespasian
- Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater)
- Colosseum
- The Arch of Titus
- Relief from the Arch of Titus, showing The Spoils of Jerusalem being brought into Rome
- Silver shekel of the Second Jewish Revolt
- Portrait Bust of a Flavian Woman (Fonseca Bust), part 1 of 2
- When there is no archaeological record: Portrait Bust of a Flavian Woman (Fonseca bust)
- Forum and Markets of Trajan
- The Forum of Trajan
- Markets of Trajan
- Column of Trajan
- Column of Trajan
- Column of Trajan
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Relief from the Arch of Titus, showing The Spoils of Jerusalem being brought into Rome
Relief panel showing The Spoils of Jerusalem being brought into Rome, Arch of Titus, Rome, after 81 C.E., marble, 7 feet,10 inches high. Speakers: Dr. Steven Fine and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Where is Dr. Beth Harris from? What state or region? She has perhaps the most perfect pronunciation that I have ever heard.(13 votes)
- She studied art hitory in NY and London and the SmartHistory project looks like it's currently based in Brooklyn. That's as far back as I could find.
( http://www.linkedin.com/pub/beth-harris/4/744/ba8 ).
I like listening to both of them and, after hundreds of videos, even get a positive Pavlovian response from that little piano riff at the beginning. My only wish is that it was easier to find new content in the art section without having to resort to hunting through each subsection individually.(26 votes)
- Did the Arch of TItus inspire the Arc de Triumph? They look very similar.(8 votes)
- Yes, it did - good observation! Read here (https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/early-empire/a/the-arch-of-titus) under "influence".(6 votes)
- What does the pink and green coloring signify in the map at? 2:08(5 votes)
- Pink colored are senatorial provinces, where the Roman Senate had the right to appoint the governor and green ones are the imperial provinces, where the Roman Emperor appointed the governor (legatus Augusti). These provinces were often the strategically located on the border.(5 votes)
- I am curious, was this relief also brightly painted like many other Greek and Roman relieves, or was it actually made in plain white marble the way we see it today? Thank you!(3 votes)
- It was painted. In fact, Dr. Fine and Dr. Frischer, both of whom contribute to Smarthistory here on Khan Academy have been involved in recent discoveries about the original polychromy. Have a look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/arts/design/menorah-on-arch-of-titus-in-roman-forum-was-rich-yellow.html(6 votes)
- Is there any practical purpose to circumcision? Or is it just a quirk of tradition?(2 votes)
- It has been found to slightly reduce the likelihood of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Furthermore, it might be practical for third world countries, where health and hygiene is not easy to maintain. Other than that, it is just a religious and societal tradition.(5 votes)
- Atwhat does Samaritans and polythiests mean? 2:24(1 vote)
- The samaritans are an ancient judaic sect. The polytheists (which in translation means many gods) are adherents of several ancient religions, most of whom had many gods instead of one god like the israelites.(2 votes)
- they dont under stand jewish history(2 votes)
- I have a lot of questions about the coins of Roman Emperors Vespasian and Titus, which are beside each other at bothand 2:33. I noticed on the coin labeled by the text beneath it to be a depiction of Titus that the lettering includes "VESPASIAN" in the upper left. Did his long formal name, long like most Roman Emperors, include his father's name or are the coins mixed up so that one's actually Vespasian's? I don't see "VESPASIAN" on the coin that's labeled as his, only "VESPA" is the closest to it. How come I don't seem to see "TITUS" on either coin? How did each Roman Emperor come to be known historically by only one or two names/titles when they had so many? Does anyone know what all the letters on these coins mean? I'm guessing that "IMP" refers to Imperator or Emperor. 5:37(1 vote)
- This might be a better article to answer your questions: http://www.ancient.eu/Roman_Coinage/
So might this: http://ourpastimes.com/facts-roman-coins-5002580.html
and this: https://www.reference.com/hobbies-games/roman-coins-2eaf9f9fdf6ecce(1 vote)
- What other previous civilization artifacts did the Romans plunder and bring back to Rome?(1 vote)
- The Arch of Titus shows a 7 light candle stick. Where did this come from ? Did Herod make another copy or is this the original ?(1 vote)
- The depiction of the candlestick on the Arch of Titus is a copy of something. If you read your Old Testament (the part of the Bible preceding Matthew), you'll discover that the temple of Jerusalem was looted over and over by Kings of Judah (to pay tribute) and conquerors from other places (to pay war reparations). Everything after the mythical "original" was a copy.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(gentle piano music) - [Voiceover] We're
looking at the bas-reliefs of the Arch of Titus, the
most famous of which show the spoils of Jerusalem
being brought into Rome in the great triumphal
parade honoring the general, soon to be, emperor, Titus, at his great victory at
destroying Jerusalem. - [Voiceover] A triumphal
arch is something through which the emperor
would enter with booty, with lots of attendants and
soldiers and prisoners of war. I mean, this was a big moment of celebrating victory in Rome. - [Voiceover] At the
end of which the general of the losing army would
be ceremonially murdered. - [Voiceover] Did that happen at this? - [Voiceover] Yes, a guy
named Simon, son of Giora, who was one of the rebels of Jerusalem, was killed at the end. - [Voiceover] In art
history, when we look at the Arch of Titus relief, we
sometimes miss the violence, and we tend to talk about it informally because, in so many ways, it
exemplifies ancient Roman art. The figures are naturalistic. There is even an illusion of space as these soldiers carry the booty, from the temple in Jerusalem, through a gate of the city. - [Voiceover] Well, we're very fortunate that the Jewish War had its historian, Joseph, son of Mattathias, in Hebrew, Flavius Josephus, in Latin. He was a Judean general who switched sides in the middle of the war, and was supported by the emperor's family to write the history to convince Jews to not be part of this war and to convince Romans
that only a small part of the Jewish people were
revolting against Rome, and so Josephus is standing at the moment of this triumphal parade, watching it with ultimate
perplexity, I think, not knowing which side he was on, and so what we see here
is the unique situation where a Roman triumphal
parade is responded to by someone who understands the triumph and suffers the triumph at the same time. - [Voiceover] Mmm, Josephus.
- [Voiceover] Josephus. - [Voiceover] The Roman Empire is growing in the first century, and
the Romans are moving into what we would call the Middle East and the province of Judea. Judea becomes absorbed
into the Roman Empire. - [Voiceover] Judea, it has polytheists and has Samaritans,
people whose holy mountain is in what's now Nablus,
and lots and lots of Jews, and the Jews and the
Samaritans are not so happy about these pagans
coming into their country and taking over their holy land, and the complexities of interaction boiled in such complex
ways, and so we're watching a culture figuring out what it means to work with this very peculiar group, with its one temple for the one god. - [Voiceover] And that one
temple is in Jerusalem. - [Voiceover] In Jerusalem. - [Voiceover] In that
temple are holy objects. - [Voiceover] Where
most peoples would have a different temple in each city, so there'd be a temple for my god here, and I'd go to another city,
there'd be another god. Jews only had one, and so
they had special rights, for example, in the Roman Empire, to send back their donations, from wherever they lived, to Jerusalem where other
people weren't allowed to send money across international lines. The Romans worked to find a way to take these people,
who had the potential of being good subjects,
but had certain odd needs. They had their temple,
and they insisted upon circumcising their children,
and they had food laws, and they had a thing called a Sabbath, and all of these were very weird to Romans in different ways. They weren't all unique
to Jews so, for example, Egyptians would circumcise as well, but many of them were strange, and Judeans were so
apparent because they had a religion of books and
people could read them, and so the complex
problem led, for example, to the building of the temple in Jerusalem that, by all intents and purposes, looks like a Roman temple
of the age of Augustus, but has something odd about it, and that is it has no
statues, no images of deities, which Romans would say, "Oh, that's a Roman temple
without the fun stuff, "without the things that are meaningful," and Jews would say, "This is the Jerusalem
temple, no images here." - [Voiceover] But there
were things in the temple. There were holy objects, and that's what we see here, being carried into Rome as spoils, in the Arch of Titus. So we have the menorah,
a very important symbol in Jewish history, especially
in the Roman period, but we see other holy objects
that were in the temple, like the shew table. - [Voiceover] Table for the shewbread, or the table for the
bread of the face of God, this bread that the
Pentateuch, that the Torah says should be set before God and
12 breads placed upon it, and continued to be
used, not the same table but replacement tables,
until we come to the one that's illustrated on the arch, which is a typical Roman table. Where non-Jews would have put the images of their divinities, Jews put their holy objects
that served the divinity, but, when the Romans came and took Judea, the last of the Jewish kings, a fellow named Mattathias
Antigonus, minted a coin and on one side there was a menorah, on the other side was the table. - [Voiceover] After a
long and terrible war, with the Jews fighting
against Roman occupation, we have the most holy objects, taken from the most holy
places, shown as pure booty. - [Voiceover] The cool thing
is that you could leave the Arch of Titus, walk under it, go a hundred or so yards,
and enter into a temple built by the emperor
Vespasian, Titus' father, where the greatest art of
the age had been collected in a way to claim the greatness
of Rome and of Vespasian and, on one of the pedestals, see the self same lamp-stand
and the same table and the same horns, and so it was possible to go back and forth
between the real objects described in Josephus'
text and shown in the arch, and then, into this ancient museum, but not a museum like our museums. A museum of war booty and of trophies collected by a man who was
about to become a god himself, so it's a deeply meaningful
procession for Romans but, for Jews, it must have been ghastly. (gentle piano music)